Bluebird Care (Southend & Rochford)

Updated 5 April 2019

The inspection:

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team:

The inspection team consisted of two inspectors.

Service and service type:

The service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes, flats or specialist housing.

The service did not have a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means the provider is legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection:

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because we needed to be sure that the registered provider would be in.

Inspection site visit activity started on 27 February 2019 and ended on 8 March 2019. We visited the office location on 27 February 2019 to see the registered provider, manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures. We spoke with staff on 8 March 2019.

What we did:

We reviewed the information about the service in the form of statutory notifications received from the service and any safeguarding or whistleblowing incidents, which may have occurred. A statutory notification is information about important events, which the provider is required to send us by law.

We spoke with five people who used the service and two relatives about their experience of the care provided. We spoke with five members of staff, the registered provider and the manager. We reviewed three people’s care files and two staff recruitment files. We also looked at a sample of the service’s quality assurance systems, the registered provider’s arrangements for managing medication, staff training records, staff duty rotas, and complaint and compliment records.

Updated 5 April 2019

About the service:

Bluebird Care Southend and Rochford provide personal care to people living in their own houses, flats and specialist housing. This is a domiciliary care service and primarily provides a service to older people, older people living with dementia or who may have a physical disability. The domiciliary care service office is close to major bus and train routes.

People’s experience of using this service:

• People told us they were treated with care, kindness, respect and dignity. People and their relatives were consistently encouraging about staffs caring attitude and confirmed there were positive interactions with staff.

• People told us they were safe. The service had effective safeguarding arrangements in place to protect people from harm and abuse.

• People’s care and support needs were clearly documented and staff had a good understanding and knowledge of these and the care to be delivered. Suitable arrangements were in place to manage risk and to ensure people received their medication as they should.

• Suitable numbers of staff were available to meet people’s needs and recruitment arrangements were robust.

• Staff received appropriate training and newly employed staff completed a robust induction. Staff felt valued and supported by the registered provider and manager and received supervision.

• The service ensured they worked collaboratively with others and people were supported to access healthcare services when needed.

• People’s rights were upheld and they were supported by staff in the least restrictive way possible.

• People told us the service was well-led and managed. Quality assurance arrangements enabled the management team to monitor the quality of the service provided and staff performance.

Rating at last inspection:

Following the last inspection, the rating of the service was ‘Good’ (Last report published 22 September 2016).

Why we inspected:

This was a planned inspection based on the service’s previous rating.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk